Bacon and sausages genuinely bad for you apparently. Gutted

Step away from the hypnotically delicious bacon sandwich, sunshine. And the sausages apparently. And as for the Full English Breakfast – have you got a death wish or what?

For all of those who delight in bacon infused denial, a study by researchers at the University of Zurich is going to come as terrible news right up until the point that your taste buds mutiny and edit this unseemly dose of reality out of your priorities.

Their comprehensive study of half a million people across Europe has thrown up the grim, if not totally unexpected news that sausages, ham, bacon and other processed meats appear to increase the risk of dying young.

It came to the conclusion that diets high in processed meats had a substantially increased chance of leading to cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Gutted

The culprit seems to be the salt and chemicals used in preservation, and the British Heart Foundation, well versed in British bacon addiction, immediately began offering solutions like leaner cuts of meat rather than taking on the thankless job of suggesting we sacrifice sausages.

The study followed people from 10 European countries for nearly 13 years on average and implied that people who had a taste for processed meat were also more likely to smoke, be obese and indulge in other unhealthy pastimes. And before you hang an optimistic hat on not doing any of those things, the researchers have beaten you to it and insisted that even with none of those added patterns, processed meat alone was still dangerous.

One in every 17 people followed in the study died. Those eating more than 160g of processed meat a day - roughly two sausages and a slice of bacon - were 44% more likely to die over a typical follow-up time of 12.7 years than those eating about 20g.

In total, nearly 10,000 people died from cancer and 5,500 from heart problems.